Blue Bento Box Finished

My quilting friend, Linda got the blue bento box quilt machine quilted and I sewed the bias binding on before I left for Charlotte on Wednesday. During my free time in the hotel, I managed to get the binding sewn down. This Thursday at the Piedmont Quilters' Guild meeting, we will share the other quilts that were completed after Make a Difference Day.

Pictures are uploaded, but I'm still working on the post about the American Association of School Librarians meeting in Charlotte. More soon.

Make a Difference Day

Here are some photos from Piedmont Quilters' Guild's Make a Difference Day. In our room, we made quilts for Project Linus. Most people were making the bento box pattern, but a few made the traditional big square Linus quilts.



This is Linda who really revolutionized the entire process by discovering a strip piecing technique online that really sped up the construction process. I still like the scrappier construction method I started with, but for our purposes last week, the speed method was terrific. Thanks, Linda!



Lucille worked on the red bag of scraps that I provided.



The yellow quilt was a tough design problem because it was harder to find light and dark contrasts.



Susie started on the green bag.



Several people brought tops already constructed, so we had a table for pin basting. Two of the quilters have longarm machines at home and they took many quilts home to machine quilt.



Major string piecing going on here with the big block traditional Linus quilt construction.



When Lucille had to leave, we snagged a quilter from one of the other projects to finish the red quilt. I finished the blue quilt and it went home with one of the machine quilters. I have the binding, so I should be able to get a photo of it before it goes back to the guild for donation.

The Girl Scout Learning Center was a spectacular place to work: tons of great task lighting as well as lovely big windows, nice tables, comfy chairs, and, of course, the gorgeous setting in the woods. Among our volunteers were several Girl Scouts, their moms, and siblings. Thanks to the Carolina Peaks to Piedmont Council for the use of the hall.

A little vent and preparing for Make a Difference Day

Well, our Thursday night Piedmont Quilters Guild meeting was supposed to be spent preparing for Make a Difference Day (MADD), but because so many other projects have been loaded into this day, nothing really got accomplished. The MADD organizers know what they are doing. They tell you to work on one project so that you can get it finished. I mentioned this several times and was ignored. Well, I tried. Consequently, I spent all of yesterday and half of today doing the preparation work. I have made a sample block for each of the colors, I've cut the backing fabric and a 22 inch square for each of the bias bindings we will need. Most of the fabric is in two and a half inch strips already.



Here's the orange block. The multicolored flower fabric is a little much, but I wanted to use the donated fabrics.



Here's the yellow one. With larger scale designs, you have to fussy cut the fabric or it just looks like nothing. That's what I did with the Care Bears fabric.



I fussy cut the fish fabric and the large scale design with the nice light background actually worked pretty well.



I love the red block. The frog fabric worked great.



The flower fabric in the green block worked well because I kept the direction going the same way.



The pink blocks are all sewn together and ready to be sandwiched and quilted. You can see the whole top in this post. I did demonstrate making bias binding at the guild meeting for a small group of people, so that's also ready to go.



Everything is in a bag and ready to travel to the Girl Scout Learning Center on October 24th. Wish me luck.

Workshop for Make a Difference Day

Here's a finished bento box baby quilt top. Tomorrow night at the Piedmont Quilters Guild is our preparation workshop for Make A Difference Day. Making the quilts with nine blocks means that we don't have to bother with borders. They will be 36 inches square which is a good size for a baby quilt. I'm going to demonstrate making bias binding as well as composing the blocks. I have three blue blocks that I'll be working with tomorrow night. Hopefully, we will have another top by the end of the evening. I have really missed my design wall doing these blocks.

"In the Pink": Quilting with the Girl Scouts

Image from Girl Scouts of the United States of America

Thanks to some great online resources, I have worked up three samples and gathered the materials for the first of my sessions with the Girl Scouts this week. They are working on a "journey" (badge from the old days) called "In the Pink" in which they educate themselves about the causes, detection, treatment, and prevention of breast cancer. They will all have gone to an information session before I see them where they will learn (among lots of other things) that the founder of the Girl Scouts, Juliette Gordon Low, died of breast cancer in 1927. She is the inspiration for the quilt we are going to create.

I'm planning on showing them Susie Shie's work to spur their creativity. I'm hoping we can do a drawing of Juliette Low as the center piece, paint it, and then the girls can write some of the things they found meaningful in the background of this drawing. We will use the pink ribbon blocks to border the drawing.



This is the first ribbon block. I used the Wikipedia template for the ribbon. The ribbon is three sections fused to the block with Wonderunder.



This is a pieced block that just uses blocks and half-square triangles. Designed by Lesley Brankin, it is found at the My Quilt Patch site. I'm planning to show the girls chain piecing to put it together.



This paper pieced or foundation block from the about.com site may be too tough so I'm going to wait to see what kind of sewing skills the girls have before I bring this one out.

October is turning out to be my month of service. Besides the three sessions with the Girl Scouts, I'm also working on Make a Difference Day with the Piedmont Quilt Guild.

Phone Ripley! She's back in the studio.

For the first time in recent memory, I've actually spent most of the day in Safety Pin Studio. After fixing the hem on a pair of Jim's pants, I did a quick straightening up and went to work making more bento box blocks for the black, white, and yellow quilt that will be a Christmas present.



I love finding the light and dark fabric combinations to make these blocks. And I find it so satisfying to use so many scrap fabrics that I've had around for years and years.

I'm hoping to get this one ready to sandwich and pin baste by the end of the weekend. Next weekend will have to be devoted to pink and blue blocks so I can get two baby quilt tops ready for Make a Difference Day (MaDD). At our October Piedmont Quilters' Guild meeting, we are going to do some prep work for MaDD so that all the various stations (sewing, ironing, basting, binding, sandwiching, machine quilting) will have work at the beginning of the day.

In the benchmark area, this is my 200th post!